Tag Archives: Music

This week (tomorrow) is the San Francisco Music Tech conference which is a must attend event for anyone that loves music and/or technology.  The event brings together entrepreneurs, developers, musicians, investors, and service providers for a full day to talk about how the music industry is evolving and how technology is playing a role in that evolution.

The speaker lineup this year is also quite impressive, here are just a few of the folks that are going to be in attendance:

• Stephan Jenkins, Third Eye Blind 3eb!
• Tom Conrad – Chief Technical Officer, Pandora
• Zahavah Levine – Chief Counsel, YouTube
• Tim Quirk – VP of Music Programming, Real Audio / Rhapsody
• Dave Ulmer – Sr. Director, Multimedia, Motorola
• Jeff Yasuda – CEO & Founder, blip.fm
• Jean Cook – Interim Executive Director, Future of Music Coalition
• Michael Masnick – Founder, TechDirt

As you can see it’s going to be quite an eclectic event with a lot of interesting discussions.  I’m really interested in the back story behind a lot of the companies such as Pandora and Blip.fm so hopefully I’ll get time to chat with both Tom and Jeff.  We can see that the music business is greatly evolving.  With the evolution of sites such as Youtube, Blip.fm, Pandora, and Imeem; the indy artists now have a chance at stardom.  We are also seeing a huge difference in how musicians are interacting with their fans, many of them are actively engaging on sites such as twitter interacting and building relationships with people that love their music.  None of these things were possible even a few years ago.  Legal is also a hot topic in the music business as more and more people are starting to download their music for free on the web.  These are just a few of the interesting topics that are sure to be covered.

Here is a full schedule of the event and here is a full speaker lineup.

These are the details on the time and location of the event:

Hotel Kabuki
1625 Post Street
San Francisco, CA
Monday, December, 7 2009
9am – 6pm + cocktail party

Brian has graciously offered a discount of 15% for all the readers of BUB, thanks Brian!

If you want to register for the event visit the registration page and enter in the code “bub” to receive the discount.

Hope to see all of you there!

connect with me on twitter @JacobM

On Saturday, I had the fortune of attending and being back stage at the Bridge School Benefit Concert in Mountain View, CA. Before jumping into the concert, I want to share a bit more about the Bridge School and the impact that this benefit has on the students.

The annual concert, now in it’s 23rd year, is the primary source of funding for the Bridge School. The school was founded in 1986 and opened to students in 1987 and my brother, Peter Schlegel, was a member of the inaugural class. Founded by Pegi Young and Jim Forderer, the school was created to meet the needs of kids with severe speech and physical impairments. A group that is marginalized more often than not, the focus on these kids prepares them to lead fulfilling lives.

The concert itself was an amazing musical experience. This year, the show featured Neil Young, No Doubt, Chris Martin (of Coldplay), Jimmy Buffet, Sheryl Crow, Monsters of Folk, Fleet Foxes, Wolfmother and Gavin Rossdale. Adam Sandler is scheduled to perform in place of Jimmy Buffet during the Sunday show. What’s unique about this benefit is that the artists all perform acoustic sets.

No Doubt was by far my favorite performer of the day. Students from the school are seated on the stage behind the artists, which presents a challenge for the musicians, performing for both the kids and the audience at Shoreline Amphitheater. Gwen Stefani and her band were the most successful with that by singing to both the kids and the audience throughout the set. Chris Martin was also amazing. As a solo performer, singing Coldplay songs, he had the unique challenge of using just his voice and a piano to woo the 20,000 or so people in the audience. He did it beautifully and was joined by a violin-playing friend of his after the first song. He was funny, making jokes about his bad choice in hat (which had a “where’s Waldo?” feel) and sharing an incredible musical performance.

Earlier in the evening, Jimmy Buffet took the stage with his happy island music and all had a good time dancing to songs like “Margaritaville”. Sheryl Crow shared an emotional set featuring a lullaby she composed for her son. Monsters of Folk and Fleet Foxes were new bands to me but both impressed the crowd, making the most of the acoustic sets. I was a little late so I missed Wolfmother and Gavin Rossdale but I heard good reviews from the people around me.

This is the one show I look forward to every year. The tickets seem a little pricey but you always get your money worth and it’s all for a good cause. I realize that this post has absolutely nothing to do with social media but is an event that I want to share with the community, especially bay area based people who may be interested in attending next year.

To learn more about the Bridge School, please visit: http://www.bridgeschool.org/

To check out the videos I recorded at the concert head over to my YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/schlegelsteph

Ouch! Watching this video of Guitar Hero featuring Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain singing along to Bon Jovi really, really hurts my soul and its got Cobain’s widow Courtney Love in an uproar too. The Guardian has much more on the story including the Twitter rant Love went on after Everett True posted this video on YouTube.

I have some fond memories of the first time I saw Nirvana at Iguana’s in Tijuana in the fall of 1991 back when the band just started to gain traction with the album Nevermind. I personally preferred Nirvana’s debut album Bleach but the album and the band were a big factor in the incredible musical revolution of the late-1980s and early-1990s.

After watching this horrendous video, I’m heading straight over to Pandora and cleanse my battered ears with some great Seattle Sub Pop sounds. Afghan Whigs, Tad or Mudhoney anyone?

What happens when you combine social networking with marketing, life-streaming, and an upcoming album release? You get a carefully laid out strategy for marketing a band online. You also get the premise behind the Republic Project, a new site touting a new model for artists to connect with their fans.

Emerging from private beta this week, the Republic Project allows artists to post pre-album content for marketing purposes with the ability for fans to pre-order content online. There’s a heavy emphasis on video, as artists can create life-streams of the album-making process, or a series of videos detailing their tours. In this way, fans become a part of the entire process surrounding the creation of the album, giving them more reason to become vested emotionally and monetarily in the finished LP.

This is a tactic that has been utilized by artists and music labels for a couple of years now, but the ability to do so required a team and a succinct marketing ploy that outlined the various social media sites required to create a cohesive and effective strategy. The Republic Project has combined several aspects of unique social media marketing methods in order to provide a DIY approach for artists.

The Republic Project is open to any artist, and artists can charge anywhere between $2.99 to $9.99 for their albums. Artists can sell individual songs as well. Content is made available in DRM-free MP3 format, which can be downloaded by fans. The Republic Project makes money by charging the fans a flat service fee of $1.99.

Conceptually, I like the potential of the Republic Project. I think it’s important for bands to find more ways in which they can engage fans and turn that into revenue. However, the commitment required for bands to maintain the content they would post on the site can be a daunting task and the lack of automated features for the redistribution of the content makes it that much more time consuming.

Including some additional integration with other social media sites would make it easier for both artists and fans to better leverage the larger social web for the purpose of pre-album marketing. This would ultimately lead to larger revenue-generation for the bands.

What is most interesting to me is the way in which the Republic Project will play out in the changing world of digital music sales and marketing. We’re seeing the emergence of a few new models for bands and artists to try out, working on both marketing and direct sales tactics. Major labels are easing up on their willingness to experiment with such models, giving them a wider range of options for future renditions of digital music.

As we’ve seen with Amie St., there is a growing need to put more control into the hands of both the artists and the fans when it comes to the sales and marketing aspects of digital music. Time will tell which format works best for all parties involved, but a think there will be multiple formats that find their way to the forefront of the digital music revolution.

by Julie Blaustein

The SanFran MusicTech Summit at the Kabuki Hotel in San Francisco this past week was perhaps sprinkled with voodoo magic to ensure all the attendees, logistics and sponsors involved would show up and do their thing. Rather, its success was truly due to the magic of Brian and Shoshana Zisk who oversaw every detail of the conference along with Todd Tate who secured over 20 sponsors (including Bub.blicio.us). Perhaps it was also due to lessons learned as this is their fourth Summit produced in less than two years. Over 600 attendees came together including entrepreneurs, lawyers, activists, artists and musicians seeking to make money and make sense of the rapidly changing world in the music industry. Many in the audience could have  easily been one the incredible speakers representing the industry.

The following statement sums up the continued quandary that the music biz finds itself in and continues to face. As stated in January of 2008 in the arstechnica site, “…music isn’t on its deathbed yet; in fact, people are listening to more artists than ever before, on more white earbuds than ever before, in more places than ever before. They’re just not paying as much.” Its the SanFran MusicTech Summit that provides the ideal place for all the players to come together  to seek out the solutions.

The sessions spanned topics ranging from Social Networking Technologies to Improve Monetization, Music Activism, The Future of the Music Industry, Mobile Apps and, oh, so much more. CLE credits were offered along with their program that included an interesting discussion of the future of music licensing on the Internet. According to the official site , the most  popular sessions attended were Social Networking & Music, The Future of The Music Industry and Monetization – Idealism in Practice. As I was also taking pictures during the Summit, I noticed there was standing room only in the rooms, indicating additional interest in the many other sessions offered. I even overheard attendees lament that it was hard to pick which session to attend. Networking abounded throughout the day in the hallways, during lunch and at the sponsored breaks that provided coffee, sweets and other vitals to keep folks alert and energized.

There was plenty of Social Media coverage of the Summit including photo coverage by me, Mona the Cocktail Photographer, Ustream who live video streamed the sessions, along with many others. Overall the sessions were lively and full of heated discussions such as during the Social Networking & Music Session when the moderator, Dave Allen of Nemo Design tied his question to a company’s transparency. He appeared to put Geoff Ralston, CEO of LaLa on the spot when he inquired about patents that he had applied for recently. At first it appeared Geoff was not going to be transparent with the audience, but he then elaborated his view in full detail, revealing that it was part of a group of 15 patents that had the DRM title in it that caused the stir.

As usual, the Summit’s grand finale was a packed banquet room full of networking, food and all types of beverages. Food was served, High Flyer poured wine, panty melting Love Potion #9 was offered and positive moods were in abundance. Another great day in San Francisco full of learning, negotiating, partnering, music and lots of new friends for all.

Reaching Fans Session

Social Networking & Music Panel: Ali Partovi of iLike, Chuck Fishman of Cisco and Anthony Batt of Buzz Media

Krystyl Baldwin, Maddie Mat Mat & Laura Wiggins - the gals who kept it all running smoothly

Standing Room Only

Matthew Gonzales Sharing the SanFran MusicTech Experience

Local Music Vibe who power a national network of local music communities

Leon Rogers, Heather Rafter, Sean O'Connel and Brian Zisk

Cocktail Hour has arrives at last!

More pics at Julie B’s Flickr Site